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Physic himself must fade;
All things to end are made;
The plague full swift goes by;
I am sick, I must die.

Lord have mercy on us!

Beauty is but a flower,

Which wrinkles will devour:
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen's eye;

I am sick, I must die.

Lord have mercy on us!

Strength stoops unto the grave:
Worms feed on Hector brave.
Swords may not fight with fate :
Earth still holds ope her gate.
Come, come the hells do cry;
I am sick, I must die.

Lord have mercy on us!

Wit with his wantonness,
Tasteth death's bitterness.
Hell's executioner

Hath no ears for to hear
What vain art can reply;
I am sick, I must die.

Lord have mercy on us!

Haste therefore each degree
To welcome destiny:
Heaven is our heritage,
Earth but a player's stage.
Mount we unto the sky;
I am sick, I must die.

Lord have mercy on us!

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[SAMUEL DANIEL, the son of a music master, was born near Taunton, in Somersetshire, in 1562, and educated at Magdalen College, Oxford. Leaving the University at the end of three years without taking a degree, he continued to prosecute his studies under the patronage of the Countess of Pembroke, sister of the accomplished Sidney, whose friendship procured for him the appointment of tutor to the Lady Anne Clifford, daughter of the Earl of Cumberland. His diligent application to literary pursuits enabled him to improve these favourable circumstances, and the reputation he acquired by the publication of some of his early poems, especially the Complaint of Rosamond (in which Mr. Malone imagines he has discovered the inspiration of Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis) recommended him to the favour of royalty. Thus encouraged, he became one of the volunteer laureates of Queen Elizabeth, and under King James obtained a place at court as gentleman extraordinary, and subsequently as one of the grooms of the privy chamber to the Queen Consort, who is said to have entertained a high opinion of his conversation and his writings. Few poets have been more fortunate in their associations. Daniel enjoyed the friendship and respect of his most distinguished contemporaries, and amongst those with whom he maintained an intimate intercourse were Camden, Drayton, Shakespeare, Jonson, Fulke Greville, Harrington and Spelman; even Gabriel Harvey paid tribute to his merits, and Spenser transmitted his character to after times in his Colin Clout's come home again. While he held his office at court (which imposed merely nominal duties upon him) he lived in a handsome garden-house in Old-street, St. Luke's; but towards the latter part of his life, feeling that a race of

greater poets had extinguished his early popularity, or, as he expresses it himself, that he had

outlived the date

Of former grace, acceptance, and delight,

he retired to a farm in Somersetshire, where he died in 1619. In addition to his poems and plays, Daniel wrote a History of England, which he carried down to the end of the reign of Edward III. His reputation as a poet rests chiefly on the ponderous cantos of the Civil Wars, a poem now little read, although it occupies a place of some mark in our literature. At the close of his career, when he was relinquishing a Muse that no longer smiled upon his labours, he appears to have formed a very accurate estimate of the qualities to which he was indebted for his success :—

And I, although among the latter train,

And least of those that sung unto this land,
Have borne my part, though in an humble strain,
And pleased the gentler that did understand;
And never had my harmless pen at all
Distained with any loose immodesty,
Nor ever noted to be touched with gall,

To aggravate the worst man's infamy;
But still have done the fairest offices

To virtue and the time.-Dedication of Philotas.

unable to He always

The great defect of his poetry is want of imagination, which his naturally languid constitution was remedy by vigour or boldness of treatment. writes with good sense; and his diction, which seldom rises above the level of prose, is generally pure and appropriate. But his narrative is lifeless and tedious, and fails to sustain the attention. He is more successful in his smaller pieces, where neatness and delicacy of expression make a distinct impression, and atone for the absence of higher qualities. It has been said by some of his critics that he anticipated the improvements of a more refined age, because he wrote with a perspicuity and directness not common amongst his contemporaries. But these merits are not in themselves sufficient to project a poet beyond his own time; a truth strikingly illustrated in his case. He lived in an

age that produced the noblest examples of English poetry, and he has not survived it either in the closet or on the stage.

His plays are planned strictly on the classical model, which he lacked the power to fill up. Deficient in the essential of action, and didactic rather than dramatic, they are for the most part very flat and dreary. The tragedy of Cleopatra, his first play, from which the following piece is taken, may, perhaps, be considered the best of them.]

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THE INFLUENCE OF OPINION.

OPINION, how dost thou molest

The affected mind of restless man?
Who following thee never can,
Nor ever shall attain to rest,
For getting what thou sayst is best.
Yet lo, that best he finds far wide
Of what thou promisedst before:
For in the same he looked for more,
Which proves but small when once 'tis tried.
Then something else thou findst beside,

To draw him still from thought to thought:
When in the end all proves but nought.
Farther from rest he finds him then,
Than at the first when he began.

O malcontent seducing guest,
Contriver of our greatest woes:
Which born of wind, and fed with shows,
Dost nurse thyself in thy unrest;
Judging ungotten things the best,

Or what thou in conceit designest;
And all things in the world dost deem,
Not as they are, but as they seem;

Which shows their state thou ill definest :
And livest to come, in present pinest.

For what thou hast, thou still dost lack:
O mind's tormentor, body's wrack,
Vain promiser of that sweet rest,
Which never any yet possessed.

If we unto ambition tend,

Then dost thou draw our weakness on, With vain imagination

Of that which never had an end. Or if that lust we apprehend,

How dost that pleasant plague infest?
O what strange forms of luxury,
Thou straight dost cast to entice us by?
And tellest us that is ever best
Which we have never yet possessed.
And that more pleasure rests beside,
In something that we have not tried.
And when the same likewise is had,
Then all is one, and all is bad.
This Anthony can say is true,
And Cleopatra knows 'tis so,
By the experience of their woe.
She can say, she never knew
But that lust found pleasures new,
And was never satisfied:

He can say by proof of toil,
Ambition is a vulture vile,

That feeds upon the heart of pride,
And finds no rest when all is tried.
For worlds cannot confine the one,
The other, lists and bounds hath none.
And both subvert the mind, the state,
Procure destruction, envy, hate.
And now when all this is proved vain,
Yet opinion leaves not here,
But sticks to Cleopatra near,
Persuading now, how she shall gain
Honour by death, and fame attain;

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